


Life Not Style

by jat_sapphire



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: HIV/AIDS, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 20:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Starsky's mom calls to talk about their lifestyle; set in early 1980s.





	Life Not Style

**Author's Note:**

> This is another really early story, and it caused quite a lot of discussion about whether it was respectful of Paul Glaser's family tragedy to include HIV in an S/H story. If that consideration is important to you, be aware that the topic is central to this story, though ultimately the point is something else. This story is also archived at the Starsky and Hutch Archive, and I thank the archivists for hosting it. It was last updated there 6/24/2014.

By the time Starsky's mother called, she had as usual worked herself up into a frenzy, and there was nothing to be done but hold the receiver farther away and wait until she ran down. Hutch heard the tinny, buzzing phone voice from his seat on the couch: "Gay plague! It's a gay plague now!"

Starsky tilted the phone so he could speak into one end while keeping the other away. "Yeah, Ma, we heard--"

The phone shrieked. Starsky rubbed his forehead with the heel of his free hand. Hutch got up then, to stand behind him and pull the tense body against his own. Starsky rested the back of his head on Hutch's shoulder and they both listened to Rachael tell them the evils of their 'lifestyle.'

Hutch knew that someday he'd be fielding calls this painful. Someday his parents wouldn't be able to hold on to the pretense that their son was just the very close **_friend_** of that nice Jewish boy. But meanwhile, the Hutchinson telephone was only connected to this one once a month, so Richard could sound just slightly surprised all over again if Starsky happened to answer.

 _Wish they'd grow up._ He withdrew a little so he could rub Starsky's shoulders. Starsky sighed and let his head fall forward again. Hutch knew that the position meant no more than 'rub my neck,' but his partner looked so forlorn that way, as if wilting under the weight of Rachael's hysteria, that Hutch kissed him instead, up near the skull, and then twice more along the vertebrae until he hit the flat neck of the t-shirt.

Hutch felt the shift in Starsky's muscles, the listening-to-Ma strain loosening and the want-you tension setting in, and fit their bodies as closely together as possible given all that cloth between them. Hands sliding around the belt on Starsky's jeans, a finger inside and the others out, on the worn leather and the bumps of belt-loops. Starsky started a little as Hutch's fingers rubbed the cotton at his navel. Hutch nuzzled Starsky's hair, inhaling the rich familiar scent.

"Yeah," said Starsky to the phone even as he rubbed his ripe ass languorously against Hutch. "Yeah, Ma, I hear. I love you, too. I **_know_** you're just concerned." So Hutch knew that Rachael was winding down.

 _She vents,_ Hutch thought angrily, _... she gets it all out and then he has to carry it_. But he also knew that everything Starsky was saying in that soothing voice was true. Rachael loved her David, and if the feeling had grown a bit abstract in those years he lived in California, fought in Nam, and then went back to California to live and work and move in with his male partner, still it had only thinned down, like wire, not grown less solid. Not such a bad thing considering the fierce, devouring maternal passion she apparently still felt for Nick, even now that he was dead. _Better without that, buddy._

And as for abstract, how about the Hutchinsons? No, Hutch wouldn't dwell on that now, while he held his partner, his spouse, his real family here in his arms. Hutch would drain the hurt from Starsky if he could, and distract him from what would not drain away.

 _Wish **we'd** grow up, past minding,_ he thought, not really believing it would ever happen.

Starsky hung up the phone, leaning away just long enough to do it, and then settling back against Hutch again. Hutch kissed the side of his neck, and Starsky sighed again but didn't turn in his arms to kiss back.

"I'm really hatin' the eighties, Blintz," he said at last.

"Sucky decade," Hutch agreed. He cupped his partner's cock in his hands, rubbed it through the folds of the button fly.

"Think the test results'll be back today?" Starsky's voice made it clear enough that he knew how forlorn the hope was, so Hutch didn't bother to deflate it.

What he wanted to say was 'I love you,' but he'd just heard it in Rachael's miniaturized voice, a demand that could never be met. So he let the silence of his heart and the heat of his body and the movements of his lips and hands speak for him. And, of course, the hard-on he knew Starsk could feel behind him.

"Lifestyle." The word was quiet and bitter in Starsky's mouth. "Fucking stewardesses and waitresses and damn-all, now _that_ was an unhealthy lifestyle."

"No regrets," Hutch said, the other words they were living by, these days.

Then Starsky did turn, and one hand grasped Hutch's belt buckle and the other was in his hair, and Starsky's mouth met his, too wild and sweet to ever taste regret. Death could not be in this kiss. Hutch defied it.

But not enough to take them both to the bed they longed to share again. Soon. Soon they would, and again and again, years of future. They promised life to each other without words. Again and again.


End file.
